Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 323
weather satellites and there is no clear policy or financial benefit to be realized.
Mr. Speaker, House Concurrent Resolution 168 currently has over 150 co-sponsors.
The resolution received strong bipartisan support in our committee, and an identical resolution
passed unanimously in the other body last month. This has not been, and it
should not be, a partisan issue in the Congress, and I urge my colleagues to support passage
of the resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. SCHEUER), the chairman
of the subcommittee that handled this concurrent resolution.
Mr. SCHEUER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, the chief Sponsor of this measure, the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
ANDREWS), has done an outstandingly fine leadership job in promoting this resolution
and in developing the support that the chairman just mentioned. I yield such time as he
may consume to the gentleman to explain the resolution, what motivated him, what the
resolution means, and for any further explanation the gentleman might like to make.
(Mr. ANDREWS of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. ANDREWS of Texas. I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on an issue that I suspect many thought fell by the
wayside long ago. Back in March of this year when the President announced his intention
to commercialize our Nation’s four weather satellites, there rose from the public and from
Congress an outcry that was so loud, so overwhelmingly clear and devoid of partisanship
that I would have thought the administration would have understood that this illconceived
proposal would never gain the approval of Congress. In hearing after hearing
held this year by the Science and Technology Committee, we have received testimony and
reports which have been consistently negative with respect to this proposed sale—from
sources which include the President’s own private sector survey on cost control, NASA, the
Department of Defense, three congressionally chartered panels, a Commerce Department
Advisory Committee, and the World Meteorological Organization. Representative of the
testimony was the conclusion of a joint DOD-NASA study:
There is considerable financial policy, and program risk to the Government in commercializing
weather satellites and there is no clear policy or financial benefit to be realized.
Despite the testimony, despite the fact that the Senate has passed not only a resolution
identical to this one but language actually prohibiting the use of Commerce funds to
write a bid document including the weather satellites, despite the introduction of this resolution
in the House; despite its 150 co-sponsors and its overwhelming endorsement by
the Science and Technology Committee, the administration is moving ahead full speed.
The Department of Commerce is drafting a request for proposal that includes weather
satellites and that document is due to be released to the private sector in final form in
December.
Selling the weather satellites does not make economic sense. The National Weather
Service accounts for 95 percent of the first use of our weather data. By what logic should
the Government sell its $1.6 billion weather satellite system to a private company at a
greatly reduced rate, only to sign a long-term monopolistic contract for data services
which could end up costing taxpayers more than $100 million per year?
Furthermore, such a sale would have serious national security implications. Selling
these satellites would necessitate significant, and perhaps unwieldy, oversight and regulation
by the DOD which relies on civil weather satellites both in its routine operations and
in military emergencies.
The sale would threaten the quality of our weather data since a private operator would
have little incentive—other than price-gouging perhaps—to improve services. Stagnant
technology would hurt everyone who relies on weather information: the farmer, the pilot